# interwar-salw

This repository contains the code and resources required to replicate the analysis presented in the paper "Money First? Strategic and Economic Interests in the International Arms Trade Network, 1920–1936".

## Abstract

Arms transfers result from economic and political motives, with the latter often dominating the former. While this is accepted knowledge for the post-World War II period, it seems not to apply earlier. Much existing research argues that in the Interwar years, weapons were traded as purely commercial goods because governments had neither the ability nor willingness to control and direct arms transfers. We reassess this idea and argue that, while formal control was largely absent, governments could steer weapons shipments nonetheless because arms producers depended on them as main customers, sales agents, and financiers of their export business. Anecdotal evidence suggests that governments actively used this influence. To test whether Interwar arms transfers were the result of political or commercial interests, we use newly collected, historical data on the small arms trade and inferential network analysis methods. Our results suggest that although economic drivers existed throughout the Interwar period, political considerations were especially influential when international relations were hostile at the start and end of the period. This research contributes to our understanding of international economic relations between the World Wars and of the drivers of arms transfers across time.

## Requirements

All analyses were conducted in R 4.2.3. To ensure the correct dependencies, we include a `renv` lockfile. See [here](https://rstudio.github.io/renv/index.html) for further information.

## Data Availability

The original data on the Interwar Period Weapons transfers is processed from [1]. The preprocessed data is provided pre-bundled in the `data` folder. All other sources are cited in the manuscript and can be accessed at the corresponding locations.

## Repository

```bash
interwar-salw/
├─ data/                # contains bundeled data files
├─ figures/             # final figures included in the manuscript 
├─ models/              # fitted models 
├─ results/             # preliminary figures not included in the manuscript
├─ scripts/             # scripts to replicate the descriptive and inferential analyses
├─ tables/              # tables included in the manuscript
├─ utils/
│  ├─ ergMargins/       # additional package for marginal effect estimation
├─ .gitignore
├─ .Rprofile
├─ README.md
├─ interwar-salw.Rproj
├─ renv.lock            # lockfile to restore dependencies via `renv`
```

## Replication Steps

1. Open the `ìnterwar-salw` folder as a project in RStudio and restore the dependencies via the `renv::restore()` command to reinstall all of the packages as declared in the lockfile.

2. Run all scripts in the `scripts` folder in the order of their prefix. Within a given number, the order is irrelevant. `1_` denotes all descriptive analyses, `2_` the main models presented in the manuscript. `3_` denotes the robustness and backbone analyses, and `4_` creates the figures of fitted models.

Each script with a `2_` or `3_` prefix saves the corresponding model in the `models` folder. **Note:** due to the *substantial* computational requirement to run all the scripts we have included the fitted models in this repository, and the corresponding figure generating scripts can be run without the preceding scripts. On a fairly modern laptop, the main model should take less than an hour to estimate.

3. The figures and tables included in the manuscript can be located in their respective folders with corresponding names.

## References

[1] M. Mehrl and P. W. Thurner, ‘The Interwar Period International Trade in Arms: A New Dataset’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2024, doi: 10.1177/00220027241228189.

[2] M. Mehrl, D. Seussler, and P. W. Thurner, ‘Money first? Strategic and Economic Interests in the International Arms Trade, 1920-1936’, 2022.
